anoneggymous

[anoneggymous]

Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers EP 1 and 2 short review.

Once again, I've decided to watch an anime just because of the opening. This time, it is, as said previously in the title, Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers.

So, this opening is pretty great. Both the music and visuals are awesome, and listening to grindcore(ish? These webcore-like genres are usually very vague and interchangeable) in something like this is very surprising and refreshing. Not only that, but the animation is filled with ominous and weird symbolism and such, making it very intriguing.

Well... I can't really say the same thing about the show, or at least the two first episodes... The animation and soundtrack are still great, however, the story is almost nonexistent, characters haven't the slightest introduction or backstory, and the world building is minimal, although saying even that is being gentle.

So, the premise is that one day in 2008, the government(?) decided out of the blue that Otaku culture overall should be prohibited, and started heavily censoring all the content and people related to that. There are (apparently) three magical girls, and these girls love/admire a protagonist named "Otaku hero" for no apparent reason. This protagonist is the leader of the otaku resistance, that fights against the oppression to "make anime legal again" or whatever.

Or, more concisely - stuff just... Happens. The show just states things as fact, and that's it; there are three magical girls that for some reason admire/love the protagonist wholeheartedly. These three girls have destructive magical powers, each one has a different transformation sequence, which seems to be completely random, or at least based on niche humor that I don't understand (I must admit that my knowledge about Mahou Shoujo overall is extremely limited), and I don't see any story arcs in progress, aside from the major one of them having to defeat this oppressive system through (nonsensical and magical) guerrilla warfare.

However, the writing in this is so bad that it makes me suspicious - how come a show with writing so inconsequential and lazy has such a high production value on the rest of the areas? I can't help but wonder, then, if this is some Madoka-esque deconstructive experimental something-something anime that will soon kill all of its characters or reveal that it was all a dream or something. Or, if we're lucky, provide actual commentary/critique on the sexualization and commercialization of the feminine figure inside the Mahou Shoujo genre, along with all the other questionable stuff that comes with core Japanese Otaku culture.

Only time will tell, though. I might watch another couple of episodes before deciding if this show is going anywhere. It's also worth mentioning, though, that the ending is also really deep, with great music and even more subtext and symbolism:

This Evangelion-like cynical and almost memento-mori (and continuity from the opening) approach really hint at something else coming from the show, or at least I hope, since anime routinely have a more parnassian approach to the content, so all of this could very well only be a dumb anime that just means to look cool and sound pretty. We'll see.